Diana Palmer - The Rawhide Man

“I didn’t run,” she replied, telling the lie very calmly. “I simply didn’t see any reason to stay an extra day and give you any more free shots at me.”

He glanced at her. “I meant what I said about Katy,” he said darkly. “I don’t want her made into a miniature debutante, is that clear? You lay one hand on her wardrobe and you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

There was no arguing with him when he was in that mood; she knew the look from memory. She turned her face away. “Don’t worry, I won’t be around long enough to do any damage.”

“You’ll be around. Now shut up,” he added, glaring her way. “I don’t like conversation when I’m flying this thing. You wouldn’t want to crash, would you?”

“The airplane wouldn’t dare,” she muttered angrily, glancing at him. “Like most everything else around you, it’s too intimidated to take the chance!”

Surprisingly, he laughed. But it was brief, and then his face was the familiar hard one she was accustomed to.

They landed at the San Antonio airport late that night, and Bess was exhausted. She barely noticed her surroundings until they were heading toward the exit and she got a good look at the walls. They were hung with paintings, all for sale, all exquisite, and most of Western subject matter.

“Oh, how beautiful!” she exclaimed over one, which showed a ranch house and a windmill overlooking a vast expanse of desert land. It looked like West Texas might have looked a hundred years ago, and she was instantly in love with it.

“Come on, for God’s sake,” Jude muttered, dragging her away with a steely hand on her arm. The touch went through her like fire.

“Could you stop grumbling for one minute?” she asked him, glaring up, and it was a long way despite her two-inch heels and her five feet, seven inches of height. “And glaring and scowling….”

He lifted an eyebrow and looked down his nose at her. “Why don’t you stop criticizing everybody around you and take a look at yourself, society girl?” he taunted. “What makes you think you’re perfect?”

She knew she wasn’t, but it hurt, coming from him. “I won’t marry you,” she said with controlled ferocity. “Not if you kill me first.”

“If I killed you first, there wouldn’t be much point in marrying you,” he said conversationally. He pulled her along with him. “And you might as well stop arguing. You’re going to marry me and that’s the end of it.”

They stepped out into the nippy air and she tugged her coat closer. It wasn’t raining here, but it was cold all the same. The palm trees looked chilly, and the mesquite and oak trees they drove past in Jude’s black Mercedes had no leaves on them. They looked as stark as the pecan trees back home.

Pecans reminded her of food, which reminded her that she hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, and then she remembered what he’d said about turning off the power.

“My gosh, you idiot!” she burst out, turning in the seat. “You cut off the power to the refrigerator!”

He glanced at her. “Don’t start name-calling. I’ve got an edge on you in that department. So what if it spoils? You won’t be there to eat it.”

“It will smell up the whole house!”

“I’ll take care of it,” he said calmly. “You can give me the name of a realtor.”

“You can’t order me to sell Oakgrove!” she burst out irrationally, though earlier she’d made up her mind to do just that. “It’s been in my family for over a hundred years!”

“You’ll sell it if I say so,” he returned, giving her a hard glare. “Shades of Scarlett O’Hara. It’s just a piece of land and an old house.”

She thought back to all the family picnics, the rides through the woods, the beautiful springs and summers and the loving care that each generation had lavished on the estate. Suddenly it was clear to her that she wouldn’t sell it, after all. “No,” she said. “It’s a legacy. If land is so unimportant, why do you hold on to Big Mesquite?”

“That’s different,” he said. “It’s mine.”

“Oakgrove is mine.”

“God, you’re stubborn,” he growled, glaring across the passenger seat at her. “What do you want the place for?”

“It’s my home,” she told him. “When you come to your senses, I’m going back there to live.” And I’ll figure out some way to maintain it, she added to herself.

He turned his attention back to the road. “I need those damned shares. Your mother,” he added curtly, “has very nearly cost me the corporation I’ve worked all my life to build up. By denying me the shares that were rightfully mine, she’s tied me up in a proxy fight that I’ve almost lost.”

“A proxy fight?” she asked dully.

“I have an enemy on my board of directors,” he said shortly, as if it irritated him to have to tell her even that much. “He’s shrewd and cunning, and he can sway votes. We’re almost even right now. I’ve got to have that block of shares you own or I’ll lose control of the corporation.”

“Can’t you find some other way to get them?” she asked bitterly.

He sighed. “I’ve got my attorneys working on it right now, going over your mother’s will with a fine-tooth comb. But they aren’t optimistic, and neither am I. She’s made sure that I can’t buy those shares from you. Under the terms of the will, you can’t give them to me, either. It looks as if the only way I can control them is to marry you.” He glanced sideways, his eyes hot and angry. “It would almost be worth losing the corporation,” he muttered, “to send you home.”

She drew in a weary breath. “The corporation is your problem. If you can find a way to get the stocks, well and good, but I’m not marrying you. I’d rather starve.”

“The feeling is mutual, but neither of us may have any choice.”

“I have,” she returned.

“Not with me,” he replied calmly. “Not a chance in hell. If it takes marriage, you’ll marry me.”

“I hate you!” she burst out, remembering graphically the humiliation she’d suffered from him. “Give me one good reason why I should even consider being tied to you?”

“Katy,” he said simply.

She leaned back against the seat, feeling utterly defeated, and closed her eyes. “You don’t want me around Katy, you’ve said so often enough. I’ll corrupt her.”

He lit a cigarette as he drove, staring ahead at the streetlit expanse of the sprawling city of San Antonio. “She needs a mother,” he said finally. “I’ve done some thinking about what you said at that reunion. I’m not agreeing that you were right,” he added with a glare. “But I’m willing to concede that you weren’t totally off base. She’s growing up tough. Maybe too tough. A softening influence wouldn’t be such a bad idea. And she likes you,” he growled, as if that was totally incomprehensible.

“I like her, too,” she said quietly, and let him chew on that. “But what are you offering me? You’d be getting control of my shares and a mother for Katy, but what would I get?”

His eyebrows went up. “What do you want? To sleep with me?” He let his eyes wander over her wildly flushed face. “I suppose I could force myself….”

“Damn you!” she burst out, hurt by the sarcastic way he’d said it.

He turned his attention back to the road. “Come on, wildcat, tell me what you want.”

She shifted restlessly. “Not to be forced into marrying you.”

“That’s a foregone conclusion.” He puffed away on his cigarette. “Tell you what, society girl. If worse comes to worst and we have to go through with it, I’ll maintain that antebellum disaster for you, and you and Katy can spend summers there.”

She turned her head and studied his unyielding profile. “You would?”